Three Months
by Quinndolynn
Summary: Tony's three month plan pans out. Sequel to "5 Things," but it can stand on its own . TIVA.


Title: Three Months

Warnings: Annoying persistence, clichéd desserts. Technically a sequel to "Five Things Tony Calls Her That He Probably Shouldn't" but I think it can easily be read as a stand-alone.

Summary: Other Games! Tony's three-month plan pans out.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, but, what's this, I have to wait two weeks for more? Sadness…and justification for fic!

Three Months

Month One:

"Probie, this coffee's gone cold. I need new."

She stares at him like she debating which part of him to incapacitate first.

"Come on David, I know your English can't have gone rusty that fast. Java, now."

Tony lives that day only because Gibbs returns from MTAC at that moment and demands an update.

* * *

"Probie, I need these files scanned."

"I've done mine already Tony."

"Great, now you can do mine."

Tony lives that day because Abby drops by to pick up Ziva for their night of dinner and slasher movies. He has to scan the files himself.

* * *

"Probie – "

The thud of a knife imbedding itself in the cubicle wall cuts him off.

"Hey!" Gibbs yells at an irate Ziva.

Tony lives that day because Ziva gets a time out.

* * *

"Hey Daveeed."

Ziva looks up warily. He's got a styrofoam container in one hand and his customary smug expression.

"Let me guess," she says, holding up one disdainful long-fingered hand to preemptively halt his words. "Your lunch was too salty. You need me to go pick you up something new. You've got dry-cleaning that's ready while I'm at it. Oh, and the new girl in intake looks pretty, so you need me to get her number."

Tony's grin widens by about four teeth. "That all sounds good," he admits, but actually this," he sets the container in front of her, "is for you."

Ziva looks between the offering and his face suspiciously. She pops it open to see a generous slab of chocolate raspberry cake. There's a candle stuck in it.

"I don't understand," Ziva says.

"It's been a month right?" Tony leans over the desk, snaps a zippo, and the candle sports a tiny festive flame. "Happy end of probie-dom."

Ziva did not even realize the milestone was here already. But Tony did. Tony remembered. Tony got her cake. Ziva bites her lip before she does something Abby-like. She purses her mouth instead, and the flame twists into a tiny smoke curl.

"Did you make a wish Agent David?"

Agent David smiles her sneaky smile, and his heart gets a little melty, like buttercream frosting under a puff of warm breath. He thinks of blowing-out-candles, blowing-on-diamonds, blowing-him-kisses.

"Yes," she says.

"Cake?" McGee asks over Tony's shoulder. "Why's there cake?"

"Because Probie," Tony says, "_Agent_ David has been with us a month."

"Agent?" McGee asks, squeaky with outrage. It's been an enchanted month for Tim, with Tony's attention diverted elsewhere.

"Some people outgrow the probie, Probie," Tony explains magnanimously, "You, don't."

Ziva laughs. She tears the wrapper off her plastic fork, and eats her cake bite by victorious bite, while McGee sulks. Tony sits across from her and plots.

Month Two:

Tony can bring the charm.

This is well-documented and widely acknowledged. Tony has a reputation that rests on him being able to bring the charm. Tony has received important undercover assignments involving the seduction of heart-breaking brunette doctors due to his ability to bring the charm.

Tony's charms are failing him. He's always used them on Ziva. He used them on Kate. They were default. They were practice and banter and smirk and fun. He says all the things he'd say while chatting someone up, but without the heat, or at least with the heat turned way down.

And now? He has no tricks up his sleeve.

Still, he tries to bring the charm. He smiles at her with little provocation. She squints in confusion. He gets into her space, and she gets back into his. He leans over to type at her computer, and she shifts to accommodate him, seeming not to notice that when she turns her head, their faces are inches apart.

"Do I have something on my face?" she asks, on more than one occasion, because he stares.

He dresses smart, makes sure not to spill anything on himself. He stops pretending to check out other women to get a rise out of her, because he stopped actually checking out other women longer ago than he actually cares to admit. He opens every door he can for her. She starts walking faster to get there ahead of him, and then gives him strange looks when he tries to outpace her. They almost crash into the autopsy door together on one occasion, and Ducky has stern words with them about footraces in the halls.

Abby notices and tells him he's being weird. Ziva only notices that he's being weird.

He calls her sweetcheeks, and sugarlips, and queen-of-my-heart.

She calls him Tony.

The month proves long and fruitless.

Month Three:

Ziva starts smiling more the third month. She has a whole arsenal of smiles and most of them are scary, but he starts to see others peeking out her mouth. Smiles of surprise and delight, smiles of pleasure. It freaks him out a little. But she can still drop a coked-out marine though so she's not going soft.

She brings cupcakes in one morning, and he sniffs his suspiciously for scents of blue dye, but she just laughs, and wipes a fleck of icing from the tip of his nose with the pad of her thumb.

She admits to feeling some relief that the wound she got from Kleinman did not leave a scar.

"See?" Ziva says, and Tony turns around in his chair and there is Ziva's belly, tan and warm, and yes, unscarred, still worthy of hanging up on an office wall to make stuck-at-sea sailors sick with jealousy. Ziva's fingers trace a not-there line down the side of her abdomen, and pulls her shirt back down.

"Uh. Good," Tony says, and tries to sound like he's not being strangled. His palms itch with various memories of that warm skin.

One day she's reduced to tears at her desk, or as reduced as she gets, which means a glimmer of moisture in each eye, because one of her old Mossad colleagues has forwarded her an email with some pictures of someone's new baby.

Tony doesn't know what to do, so he kneels next to her chair and pats her arm while she pores over the Hebrew characters he can't read like they're from a long lost page of scripture.

"Cute kid," he says, because it is. He knows it means a lot that the wall of silence has grown a crack. He says as much.

Ziva laughs. "Because my father wants to prove that one can be Mossad and still have a life."

"Is that true?"

She shrugs. "It is easier if you are a man, and don't have to take maternity leave in order to have a new little one. Still…"

She doesn't finish the thought. "I'm hungry," she says instead. "Let's get lunch."

He gives up calling her names.

She smiles, she drops coked-out marines, she lets him get in her space, she invades his space in return.

He wakes one morning, and realizes that two months ago he put cake on her desk, and she made a wish. He wonders if it came true. He wonders how he failed so spectacularly.

The day passes in the same pattern as the ones that came before it. Ziva David, ex-Mossad NCIS agent, drives like a maniac, solves cases, ignores the man across from her when he acts like a child, which is often.

That evening, she's standing on his doorstep. He's not the only one who noticed the day. Ziva did too. Ziva remembered.

She doesn't bring cake. She brings herself, warm, tan belly, and pursed lips, eyes that glimmer over baby pictures and coded messages of disapproval, eyes that sparkle over candle flames.

She brings acceptance of him, of his weirdness, of his charm. She brings refusal to let him open all the doors in the world for her.

"Tony," she says.

"Ziva." he answers.

"Now that time you said it right," she tells him. She looks at him like _that_. He lets her in.

((So I decided it was very silly of Tony to make plans, because really, who is he to decide? I wrote this instead of doing reading, and I'm posting it without much editing, so here's hoping it all works out and that I feel productive this weekend…))


End file.
